I have decided the best thing to do is just continue to blog.
Comic sales were overall up last month while DC continued to suffer a bit from strong Marvel releases, cohesive stories at Marvel, and a series of publicity missteps by DC. It hasn't been pretty for DC these days. And personally, I wonder how that translates to sales. I have to admit, not much of what DC has recently released has grabbed me. As always, ICv2 does a great job of breaking down sales. Here is their list of the top 300 books for March 2013: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/25462.html
Supergirl #18, the first issue post-H'El on Earth, a book with a hidden creative team, and in many ways a transition issue while we wait for writer Michael Alan Nelson comes on board, saw the book fall below the 30K mark for the first time. In fact, the issue is down 7% from the prior issue.
So the anticipated 'bump' from H'El on Earth is quite the reverse, no big surprise given how odious Supergirl was in that arc. It is sad how basically everything that the character was in the prior year plus was simply ignored and undone by H'El.
And I am not surprised that readers left. The book has something of a lame duck feel right now. It feels like the time between Kelly and Puckett, the forgotten Bedard issues of the last incarnation.
But it seems to me that maybe DC simply doesn't know what to do with Superman or his family of characters. I know that reading stuff on-line doesn't necessarily reflect the majority but there seem to be lots of Superman fans who are pretty unhappy with the way Superman is being portrayed in the 'new 52'. And you can include me in that group.
And sales seem to bear out that the new approach to the character isn't selling.
Action Comics #18 was the end of a Grant Morrison run on the title. It sold nearly 62K, a very very healthy number in this current market. But shouldn't it have sold more?
Meanwhile, Scott Lobdell's Superman has slipped below 50K. And Superboy is selling around 24K.
Now I know these are all decent sales in the comic world of 2013.
But shouldn't these characters draw more readers?
I long for the day when Superman is written like Superman, with quality creators, and soars to the top of the charts. I hope that Supergirl becomes the strong and optimistic hero she should be. Maybe Superman Unchained and Batman/Superman will bring about a renaissance.
3 comments:
I'm currently in the process of catching up with DC (As far as the Superman family is concerned, I'm half way through the Grounded / Black Ring stories. I've finished the last Supergirl Trade, a Series I picked up as part of the New Krypton crossover.
It's worrying to read about how the Super-family (which I intend to collect after I caught up) is doing at the moment :(
That's the spirit Anj - don't let them get to us - continue one as we would and as you would with a great blog.
Frankly I am not surprised at the sales drop, Supergirl just got jobbed out in a humiliating fashion to H'El, she looked like a little dupe in that mini and who rushes to buy a credulous little twit's comic anyway?
Worse she got jobbed out solely to make Superman and Superboy look like Demigods, I'm not exactly sure how such a scenario gets anyone excited about the character or sends anyone out onto the internet to evangelize the solo book's merits.
We should be grateful that it wasn't a ten or fifteen percent drop quite frankly. What drives me nuts about this is that I feel like I'm fighting all over again the character battles we had over Supergirl back in 2006-2007 when she was shooting up school buses and having addict type hallucinations. DC did not listen then, and will not listen now and seems quite content with a Supergirl that exists to do nothing save traffic in tragic mistakes that make Kon and Kal El look wonderful by comparison. This is TEN TIMES WORSE than "being in Superman's shadow", it is being "Superman's little dupe"....and if this is the case then give me the Silver Age with it's unctuous paternalism and restrictive notions of femininity, at least THAT Supergirl would have spotted H'el for a Sumb*tch a mile off.
JF
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